I really like the Pain au Levain breads that I've made from Mr. Hamelman's "Bread". And just the other day I made another similar to this Pain au Levain w/WW. But if find myself wanting a rye flavor more so than whole wheat.
So I swapped out the 60% bread flour levain for a 125% rye levain. Adjusting for the difference in water due to the very liquid levain, it dropped the final mix hydration down to ~57%. Way too dry to want to deal with during an autolyse. And therefore while scaling out the final mix, I added the levain to the mix immediately, but otherwise kept everything else the same. And ended up with the prescribed total dough hydration of 68% for this Pain au Levain with 125% hydration rye levain.
I finally changed out my old and trusty, but severely cracked 1/4" clay tile baking deck
with this
a scrap piece of granite cut to size. Thanks to pictures from Lazy Loafer which shows a similar stone, although I opted out of a second slab of granite above the bake area as LL has. And this was my virgin bake.
The scoring is a tad sloppy, but I can't say I'm displeased with the final product.
330g x 3 baguettes
510g x 1 batard
| Pain au Levain w /125% rye levain | |||||||||||
| Hamelman/Alfanso | |||||||||||
| Total Flour | |||||||||||
| Total Dough Weight (g) | 1500 | Prefermented | 16.00% | ||||||||
| Total Formula | Levain | Final Dough | |||||||||
| Ingredients | % | Grams | % | Grams | Ingredients | Grams | |||||
| Total Flour | 100.00% | 883.4 | 100% | 141.3 | Final Flour | 742.0 | |||||
| Bread Flour | 84.00% | 742.0 | 0.0% | 0.0 | Bread Flour | 742.0 | |||||
| Rye | 16.00% | 141.3 | 100% | 141.3 | Rye | 0.0 | |||||
| Water | 68.00% | 600.7 | 125% | 176.7 | Water | 424.0 | |||||
| Salt | 1.80% | 15.9 | Salt | 15.9 | |||||||
| Starter | 3.40% | 30.0 | 20% | 28.3 | |||||||
| Levain | 316.3 | ||||||||||
| Totals | 169.80% | 1500.0 | 245% | 346.3 | 1498.2 | ||||||
| 2 stage liquid levain build @125% | |||||||||||
| Stage 1 | |||||||||||
| Rye | 70.7 | ||||||||||
| Water | 88.3 | ||||||||||
| Starter | 28.3 | ||||||||||
| Stage 2 | |||||||||||
| Rye | 70.7 | ||||||||||
| Water | 88.3 | ||||||||||
| Total | 346.3 | ||||||||||
Update. Crumb shot added. For a 68% hydration bread the crumb is pretty open.
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I am glad that granite is working for you because when I mentioned it in a bread baking class, I was strongly discouraged from using this material. The instructor seemed to think it might explode from the heat but when you really think about it, this was formed under much hotter circumstances.
I plan to get a slab of granite for my outdoor pizza oven and see how that will work. It is a portable steel oven that has the fire built below the cooking area so I will have to play with it to figure out the optimum way of baking bread in it, and if I can at all.
Once again your loaves are amazing!
I am curious about the rationale for leaving the stone short in front and back instead of having the air flow around the sides and having it extend from the door in front all the way to the back of the oven. I would think it easier to position a loaf side-to-side with a peel than to drop it exactly where you want it front-to-back. Or perhaps it was just a matter of available slab size from which to cut.
The properties of the stone that should determine how well it bakes are its thermal diffusivity and its thickness. Thermal diffusivity is the ratio of thermal conductivity to the volumetric heat capacity (specific heat x density). If the conductivity is too low it heats slowly and doesn't give it back to the dough quickly enough to brown the bottom. If the conductivity is too high it is just like a metal plate and you burn the loaf. You can think of the diffusivity as the tendency of the material to spread out the heat both in time and spatially. Granite and basalt have approximately the same thermal diffusivity at typical oven temperatures. The big difference between them is the thermal coefficient of expansion (TCE). It is the TCE combined with the strength and toughness of the material that determines how well it resists heat shock (think cold dough on a hot piece of rock). Basalt has a very low TCE and granite is about 6-7x larger, so basalt would be my preferred material. It is probably worth noting that there is a difference in TCE between the first heating cycle and the second/later cycles, with the first cycle showing lower TCE values. If you are testing a new piece of stone, cycle it up to max oven temperature and back to room temperature a few times before you try baking on it. High alumina content firebrick and most pizza tiles have very low TCE values but are not as strong. However, natural rock is prone to having unpredictable mechanical strength due to hidden cracks in the virgin material. The larger the piece, the more likely you are to have an undiscovered crack which will grow over time with thermal cycles.
You are getting uniform browning for fairly dense loads so the combination of convection fan flow and space allocated to ventilation is clearly working for you, and I suspect that it is an electric oven just from the appearance of the crust, but I can't tell for sure. So if it is gas I am very curious how you generate and manage the steam.
I don't really know the dynamics of differing stones, so I did some TFL queries before deciding on the granite deck. Thicker than I wanted, but the slenderest remnant they had the other day, and I liked the bright reflective quality of the stone's color. Cut to match the same dimensions as the clay tiles, it is sized exactly for the left and right outermost rungs on the oven shelf and from the back rung to the front rung. There apparently is plenty of room for the steam generators on the lower shelf to work their magic around the stone, just as they did with the tiles.
On the first day in the oven, I "seasoned" the stone by bringing the oven temp up from around 250dF to 450dF over the course of a few hours. Does this do anything? I don't know, but it made me feel as though I knew what I was doing ;-) . For this first bake, the oven was set of 480dF for an hour before I even introduced a Sylvia's Steaming Towel.
Well, the tiles lasted faithfully, except for that cracking thing, for ~3.5 years. This stone cost me $20USD and if it starts to crack it will have a lot of catching up to do to match the tiles anyway.
And as mentioned before to you, my oven is electric so although billows of steam emerge from the vent during the entire steaming cycle, it is probably far less efficient at venting than a gas oven is supposed to be. And for me that's a good thing.
Smaller, thinner pieces tolerate the thermal stresses better than larger sizes, so pick the thickness based on thermal performance and horizontal dimensions based on mechanical concerns. I have never seen pizza tiles with tongue and groove edges, but it might be a good idea. Even a lapped edge would tend to keep crumbs from falling to the bottom of the oven and burning. I used butt joined 3/8" thick 6x6 quarry tile for many years and only lost a few to thermal stress fractures.
and type of stone. That would take at least a few months minimum to reach some conclusion. But it was an inexpensive investment that hopefully will yield benefits. And I was really starting to think about replacing the tiles at this point. See my comment to Doc.Dough above.
This dough, although an unknown at mix time, was also pretty easy to work with so there were no surprises.
Thank, alan
First things first. I don't do challenges or competitions - I'm boring in that way. Not my cup of tea. But we've touched on this before. As I just had the new stone deck measured out I know that the width of the stone is 21.5". I have neither a couche, a retarding pan nor a peel big enough for a grown up baguette. But I'll scrounge around and see what I can find. As I never score anything bigger than my standard shorty baguettes, I also haven't a clue about what will transpire when I do get around to giving it a go. We shall see.
I'll guess that the granite slab is the better part of 40 lbs. As the stone is hard enough to maneuver without oven mitts and unheated, the idea of heaving it around is a no-go.
thanks, alan
proofed perhaps. I think it is time for you to lean the 'Varda Knob' when it comes to shaping. Nothing like a nice knob on the end of these things to put your mark on it and teach it a lesson at the same time. I'm surprised she didn't teach it to you during your apprenticeship. ....... You need the knob way more than she does when it comes to baggies. Very nice as usual Don Baggs.
Happy baking
Not defending my bread, just want to understand. I gave this dough the same mixing, folding and bulk rise as it's predecessor, save for the addition of the levain at autolyse time. It felt "right" to me at every step. A little wetter and just a tad stickier than when it had the WW. So if it was under proofed I'm clueless. Also with the addition of the crumb, the larger holes are randomly distributed enough that there is no danger of anything resembling a flying crust.
As for the knobs. Just as we recently discussed, each of us has some signature to our breads. And so does Varda. I think that they're a unique feature to her baguettes, but that is not the look that I envision for my oven critters.
Thanks, alan